The crucial eye-witness in Johnathan Doody’s retrial for the 1991 Buddhist temple slayings is either a lying “devil” who invented Doody’s role as trigger man or an honest convict with nothing to lose by telling the truth, according to competing closing arguments Monday.

Attorneys for both sides in Doody’s retrial sought to sway the jurors’ perceptions of Alessandro “Alex” Garcia, the prosecution’s key witness and the only person to place Doody at the Wat Promkunaram temple in Waddell on the night nine people were robbed and executed.

After the closing arguments made more than four weeks after the retrial began, Doody’s guilt or innocence was placed in the hands of a Maricopa County Superior Court jury. The eight men and four women are scheduled to begin deliberations Tuesday.

Both Doody and Garcia were convicted of the brazen murders in 1993: Doody by a jury and Garcia in a plea deal that spared him the death penalty. Doody was sentenced to 281 years in prison, Garcia to 271 years.

Then and now, Garcia’s testimony is crucial to the case. Little else links Doody to Arizona’s worst mass murder, according to attorneys.

The prosecution’s case is built on Garcia’s intricately detailed testimony of how he and Doody carefully planned and executed the temple robberies and murders so that Doody could buy a Ford Mustang.

“Everything he said was corroborated,” said Jason Kalish, a deputy Maricopa County attorney. “Not one person contradicts anything Alex Garcia says.”

Kalish said Garcia has nothing to lose by admitting now that he acted alone or with a different accomplice, as defense attorney Maria Schaffer suggested. It would be easy, for example, for Garcia to instead blame two other contemporaries who have since died.

But Garcia’s story hasn’t wavered in 22 years, Kalish said.

“He made a deal to tell the truth,” Kalish said. “He was honoring his deal. He honors his word.”

Schaffer painted Garcia as a “sophisticated, savvy” 10-time confessed murderer and master manipulator who implicated Doody — the odd man out in their group of friends because of his Thai accent — to avoid the death penalty.

“In this case, ladies and gentlemen, Alex Garcia is the devil,” Schaffer said. “In this case, the State of Arizona made a deal with the devil,” “My client, Johnathan Doody, was caught in the cross hairs of that deal.”

No forensic evidence linked Doody to the scene, Schaffer said.

“The only thing that links my client to the temple murders is Alex Garcia,” Schaffer said. “Without Alex Garcia, we wouldn’t have a case.”

She said investigators were under extreme pressure to solve the slayings of nine innocent victims in a case that put them in the spotlight of international publicity.

Detectives under then-Maricopa County Sheriff Tom Agnos had already wrung confessions from four Tucson men, known as the “Tucson Four,” who were later found to have had nothing to do with the slayings.

The same investigators also grilled Garcia, then 16, after ballistics tests showed that a Marlin .22-caliber rifle that Garcia had borrowed from another friend was the murder weapon.

Desperate to avoid the death penalty, Garcia confessed to the murders and implicated Doody, other friends and the Tucson Four, Schaffer said.

The murders and robberies were Doody’s idea, Garcia told them. It was Doody who wielded the Marlin .22 caliber rifle, he said, and who insisted on “no witnesses.”

“He will say anything to get his deal,” Schaffer said.

In his plea deal, Garcia agreed to tell the truth about what happened that night, Kalish said. Physical and circumstantial evidence support Garcia’s testimony, Kalish said.

Garcia provided minute details of everything from the fatigues, masks and boots he and Doody donned, to the turns they took holding the nine victims at gunpoint and ransacking their rooms for loot and cash.

He recalled their attempts to build homemade silencers before the murders and the soft drinks they purchased at a convenience store afterward.

And he testified about how he and Doody looked at each other at the temple that night and began shooting — Garcia with the shotgun he sneaked out of his father’s house, and Doody with the rifle they borrowed.

“These two did everything together,” Kalish told the jurors. “The fact of the matter is, Johnathan Doody was with him (that night). Make him accountable for what he did.”

The jury will decide whether to convict Doody on nine first-degree murder counts, nine robbery counts and one count each of burglary and conspiracy, Schaffer said.

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